This year is an important one for relations between Japan and Australia. In 1957, the two nations signed a trade agreement that blossomed into a strong alliance. Fifty years on, Australia signed a historic security agreement with its largest trading partner. To mark the occasion, three ANU experts look at how the links between Australia and Japan were formed, and how they can strengthen Australia’s role in Northeast Asia.

Reflections on the Relationship

Half a century on from Australia’s historic trade agreement with Japan, Emeritus Professor Peter Drysdale looks back on the strengthening of links with the nation’s largest trading partner.

his year, ANU once again hosted the Japan Studies Association of Australia Conference. The conference celebrated the 50th Anniversary of the July 1957 signing of the historic Agreement on Commerce between Japan and Australia. The Conference culminated in a gala dinner at Great Hall in Parliament House hosted by the Vice-Chancellor and addressed by the Prime Minister.

Just over 30 years ago JSAA held its first biennial conference at ANU. Around the same time the foundations were also being put in place for the establishment of the Australia-Japan Research Centre at ANU.

That was during the heyday of the burgeoning economic relationship with Japan. Two years
before, Australia had concluded a comprehensive and innovative Treaty of Friendship and Co-operation with Japan. There was a huge awakening and growth of community and intellectual interest in a country that was already then by far our largest export market. That interest grew headily in the years of Japanese ascendancy through the boom of
the 1980s.

The Agreement On Commerce of 1957 had normalised relations after the Pacific War and established for the first time a basis for equality in trade dealings between the two countries.
That Agreement was a remarkable watershed in the relationship, little more than a decade after the bitterness of the war. It laid the foundations for the huge trade growth that saw Japan become Australia’s largest trading partner and Australia among Japan’s most important suppliers of foodstuffs and of a raft of strategic raw materials – coal, gas, uranium, iron ore, bauxite, alumina, aluminium, nickel, almost everything with the exception of oil. It was not just an economic agreement but also a political settlement of enormous significance, made possible under the umbrella of American security arrangements with both Australia and Japan.
The vision and courage of policymakers like John Crawford (who later became ANU Chancellor) and political leaders like Robert Menzies and John McEwen and Nobuhiko Ushiba and others in Japan still stand as beacons when we reflect on where the relationship has come from and where it might go to now. They effected a profound political change that would drive the growth and deepening of the relationship in the years that followed.
Australia and Japan have achieved so much together not despite but because of their differences – through the economic relationship – and also in the perspectives we came to share in the international community and our work in building regional cooperation through Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation. The relationship that has grown since the 1950s is one of the most remarkable diplomatic and political achievements in the past half century. It has been critical in building a vision and exemplar for how the huge plurality of people in the Asia Pacific region might live on good terms and in prosperity.

And there is increased familiarity in the relationship – through the programs in Japanese studies at almost every university in Australia, through Japanese tourism, through school and community exchanges, through the 300,000 young Australians learning Japanese today. These developments were the stuff of dreams when I was a boy growing up in a time of bitterness that was a product of the war.

This is an immensely important bilateral relationship, not merely because it has brought trade, economic prosperity and amity to the two societies. It has been the leading edge of Australia’s economic and political relationships in East Asia. Getting the relationship with Japan right is a key element in getting our relationships in East Asia right. This is why the shared endeavours and achievements in Asia Pacific cooperation were so important to both countries, beyond their hub-and-spokes security relations with Washington.

Consistent and strategic support and high level encouragement of the professional endeavours of Japanese studies specialists in Australia is an essential ingredient in getting the focus right in our relations with Japan and the region.

A strong bilateral relationship with Japan is important because of the large economic opportunities and political leverage it offers in its own right. Despite its slow growth in the 1990s Japan is a huge economy now subject to immense pressures for change that can yield benefits for Australia.

Australia’s East Asian interests depend on a deep and active relationship with Japan. It may be understandable that the decade of stagnation in Japan, the development of East Asia beyond Japan and the US-led new-economy revolution directed Japan’s attention away from Australia. It may also be understandable that these developments and political events of the last few years have directed Australia’s attention away from its long-term priorities in Japan and the region. But the time is right for Australia now to recapture its place on the Japanese radar screen and set a course of strategic engagement with Japan in East Asia and the Pacific that takes into account these new realities. That engagement must, of course, continue to comprehend our trans-Pacific economic and security interests and the rise of the East Asian community so it would be unwise to compromise those interests with special and exclusive economic or political arrangements on one side of the Pacific or the other.

	Professor Tessa Morris-Suzuki

Leading Asia's quiet transformation

Professor Tessa Morris-Suzuki sets out why Japan stands to play a central role in the thawing of relations between North and South Korea, bringing to an end the Cold War in Northeast Asia.

At the Sydney APEC Summit in September, George W Bush expressed a hope that, once the problem of North Korean nuclear weapons is resolved, it may finally be possible to move to the signing of a peace treaty marking the end of the Korean War – a war which was halted, but not settled by the Panmunjom Armistice of 1953. The media covering the Summit commented on the undiplomatic way in which South Korean President Roh Moo-Hyun confronted his US counterpart with this thorny issue, but missed the profound implications of Bush’s response. For in the last few months remarkable progress has indeed been achieved on the North Korean nuclear issue, and if this can be continued, we may be on the brink of the most far-reaching transformation to affect our region for many decades: the long-delayed ending of the Cold War in East Asia.

To understand what this means, we need to put current developments in a big historical picture. One obvious parallel is the end of the Cold War in Europe from 1989 onward. A resolution to the North Korean issue would be as momentous as the coming down of the Berlin Wall, although it would not (of course) follow the same pattern. Unlike Western Europe, which is a patchwork of large and small nations that may be reconfigured into many different constellations, Northeast Asia is dominated by two great powers, China and Japan, between which (rather uncomfortably) sits a smaller power, Korea. In modern times, reconfiguration of the relationship between these powers has always centred on Korea, and has always involved a major regional upheaval.

The first modern reconfiguration of Northeast Asia began with the decline of China and the rise of Japan in the mid-19th century, but was definitively confirmed by two wars fought between 1894 and 1905. These are generally labelled ‘the Sino-Japanese War’ (1894-1895) and ‘the Russo-Japanese War’ (1904-1905). However, that they might equally well be called ‘the First Korean War’. The two conflicts, in other words, were so closely linked as to form part of a single contest over the balance of power in Asia, and most of the actual fighting occurred in or around the Korean Peninsula: the prize that would help determine who dominated the region as a whole. In this ‘First Korean War’, Japan was the outright winner. Japan’s victories confirmed its economic and military superiority over China and its ability to challenge the western powers, while subjecting Korea to colonial rule for 35 years.
The second reconfiguration was fought after Japan’s defeat in the Asia-Pacific War in 1945. The events that took place in Northeast Asia from 1945 to 1953, and particularly the outcome of the [Second] Korean War (1950-1953), set in place the Cold War divide that would dominate the region for the next half-century. Although the collapse of the Soviet Union and the opening of the Chinese economy have helped to erode that divide, the intractable problem of the divided Korean Peninsula has meant that, in Northeast Asia, a true ‘post-Cold War order’ has been unable to emerge.

Now this last Cold War barrier is eroding, and a ‘post-Cold War Asia’ may at last be about to take shape. As in the case of the First and Second Korean Wars, what happens on the Korean Peninsula will have a decisive effect on the balance of power in Northeast Asia. But this time, happily, it looks as though the transformation will take place peacefully. From Australia’s point of view, the most desirable course for this reshaping of Northeast Asia would be a process of regional integration, leading to the emergence of some form of economic and security community linking our largest economic partners.

The worst outcome would be for strategic realignments in Northeast Asia to produce increased tensions between the region’s two major powers, China and Japan. From this point of view, Japan’s involvement with events on the Korean Peninsula is of great importance. In 2002, Japanese Prime Minister Koizumi made a historic visit to Pyongyang, in an effort to jump-start the normalization of relations between Japan and North Korea. The most significant outcome of this meeting, however, was the admission by North Korea that it had been responsible for kidnapping at least thirteen Japanese citizens in the 1970s and 1980s. This revelation caused outrage in Japan, and has become a sticking-point in Japan’s negotiations with North Korea ever since.

Japan was caught off-guard by the new willingness of the Bush administration to engage in dialogue with North Korea, and as events have moved swiftly forward this year, Japan has found itself increasingly sidelined. This is unfortunate, for a sense of isolation and marginalization could provoke nationalistic feelings in Japan at the very time when a collaborative approach to regional affairs is most needed.

The demise of the Abe administration in Japan may provide the opportunity for a new approach to the North Korean issue. Japan’s friends and neighbours, including Australia, should be urging this. For Northeast Asia today stands at a historic turningpoint, and the response of the region’s governments to today’s challenges and opportunities will shape the destiny of the region for next half-century or more.

Regional role at crossroads

The Japan-Australia Joint Declaration on Security Cooperation was the first such agreement Japan has signed with a country other than the United States since World War II. Professor William Tow argues it marks a crossroad in Australia’s engagement with the North Asian region.

Australia is at a historical crossroads. It must
choose between a strategy of regional engagement designed to pursue community-building and avoid security dilemmas, or one that designates China as a rising strategic challenge that ultimately cannot be accommodated and thus must be contained with like-minded allies. It cannot forever straddle between these two choices, despite the current Prime Minister’s insistence that it can. The vagaries of great power politics and the rapid pace of regional change predicate otherwise.

The APEC meeting in Sydney was perhaps symbolic of the first approach, while the March 2007 Japan-Australia Joint Declaration on Security Cooperation (JADSC) was symbolic of the second policy course. The JADSC is the first postwar security agreement involving specific defence collaboration that Japan has reached with another country apart from the United States. Some policy-makers and observers, including Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer, have projected a third model for the JADSC, one that would see better coordination of Australian-Japanese collaboration over range of broader security issues in transnational security areas such as counter-terrorism, disaster relief, peacekeeping and WMD non-proliferation.

However, the JADSC may not constitute an enduring or even very important component of the Asia-Pacific region’s future security architecture, due to the fluidity of domestic politics in Australia and Japan (as well as in that of the US), the substantial momentum in China’s regional growth and influence, and American preoccupation with issues outside the Asia-Pacific.

The Howard government has pushed for closer bilateral strategic cooperation with Japan for a number of years but the catalyst for intensified bilateral ties was the intensification of power by the right wing in Japanese politics culminating with the election in 2006 of Shinzo Abe.
Abe came to office with a vision of forging a ‘broader alliance of democracies’ that would include stronger links between Australia, India, Japan and the US. This vision dovetailed with a growing Australian concern that Japan feels increasingly isolated – and increasingly defensive – due to China’s rapid economic and military growth. The JADSC is partially a move to counterbalance the type of insecurity that could lead to Japan’s increasingly powerful conservative political factions embarking on rash and destabilizing foreign policy agendas in Northeast Asia and beyond.

It should be noted that Japanese domestic politics is in the process of shifting in ways that could well affect the spirit if not the letter of the JADSC: opposition leader Ichiro Ozawa of the Democratic Party of Japan, architect of the Upper House electoral victory over Abe in July 2007, has vowed to block passage of an extension of Anti-Terrorism laws. This would force Tokyo to recall its ships from the Indian Ocean where it has been busy refueling coalition ships operating off Afghanistan – a conflict which both major Australian political parties support.

With Abe’s recent resignation amid declining support for the ruling Liberal Democratic Party and with the possible change of government in Australia, the political constellation that brought Australia and Japan together to sign this memorandum may well be changing substantially.
The outcomes of pending domestic elections are becoming a major consideration in assessing the continuity and durability of the JADSC. A Labor Government in Australia and a Democratic administration in the United States could lead to a greater interest in multilateral security politics in both countries, more engagement with China, and less affinity with a sullen and conservative Japanese political elite determined to check growing Chinese power. The ascension of Yasuo Fukuda as Abe’s replacement also promises to modify recent Japanese geopolitics, reviving in particular a more even-handed posture toward Beijing.

China is projecting an increasingly sophisticated array of counter-strategies to neutralize the effects of JADSC-type arrangements as the future model for Asian security. It is calibrating selective involvement in institutional initiatives – such as the East Asian Summit and the ASEAN Regional Forum – in ways designed to gradually marginalize the US brand of bilateral or multilateral security politics. It is simultaneously shaping its own set of bilateral and multilateral politico-security relationships and probing for new opportunities for strategic interaction as part of a broader pan-Asian strategy to influence, if not to decide, the direction of most key security trends there.

The US preoccupation with international terrorism, and with the Middle East and Central Asia as the major regions that generate it appears fated to endure for years, if not decades to come. This type of policy quagmire can only lead to the continued deterioration of American influence in Asia and provide little sustainable fuel for the Americans to shape a truly competitive infrastructure to China. By default, future American administrations will need to consider cooperative multilateral instrumentalities more centrally as they struggle to come to terms with their Asian destiny.

In such an environment, the JADSC may well become just a fleeting memory sooner rather than later.

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ANU Reporter 
Spring 2007